Computing technology and the Internet have fundamentally changed the processes of creating and disseminating information and media. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have the capability to create and share content, including videos, music, and blogs. A large number of online services exist to host the ever-growing volume of user-generated content. Popular online services can receive tens of hours worth of newly uploaded content every minute.
In addition to issues regarding handling such large quantities of content, growing along with this influx of data is a responsibility to monitor and take appropriate action related to content that may violate the service's Terms of Use, interfere with intellectual property rights, or violate laws of various jurisdictions around the world. Internet services hosting and distributing user-generated content require mechanisms to ensure that the content is appropriate.
The pace of content creation and sharing would overwhelm efforts by even a modestly-sized service to comprehensively review all submissions, so alternate approaches have to be adopted. A technique that has been employed is to leverage the size of a service's community by enabling users to draw attention to potentially inappropriate content through review or flagging systems. This allows the service to assign attention to a submission based on its level of exposure and/or perceived severity of the potential violation.
However, reliance on the judgment of untrained users can create additional difficulties. Many reports may be mistaken, or may be a response to content that is unpopular but not inappropriate. In addition, malicious users may abuse flagging features to try to bring administrative action against content or a content creator they dislike or disagree with. For a service with a very large user population, this means that human review of even just the content that has been flagged by users may still be difficult.